Transforming his workplace, One Prayer at a Time

How one not-yet-Catholic disciple is showing us what belonging can do

Stemming from his experiences with Alpha, a small circle of coworkers bows their heads in prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to walk through the day with them. It all starts before the phones ring. Before the first patient walks through the door. In a physician's office in Munster.

The beginning of the work day didn't always begin with prayer

It’s thanks to Josh Znosko and his growth in faith at St. John the Evangelist.

For years, the people Josh worked alongside simply knew he was a man of faith — someone they'd quietly ask to pray for them on a hard day. Then, one ordinary morning, a coworker asked a different question: "Will you pray with me?"

Josh said yes. One became two. Two became several. Now it's simply how the morning begins.

It's a small, human-sized picture of evangelization — not a stage or a microphone, but one open heart willing to let others watch what faith actually looks like up close. One that we should consider ourselves.

The parish partner who isn't officially a parish partner, yet

Here's the twist: Josh isn't Catholic. Not officially, anyway — not until this January, when he completes OCIA and is received into the Church. Ask around SJE, though, and most people assume he's been Catholic his whole life. Over the last decade he's shown up nearly everywhere there's a need: participating in Alpha, walking through The Rescue Project, packing for mission trips, running cameras for the media team, leading tours of the church, sitting in on Discovering Catholicism, and gathering weekly with his Connect Group of fellow young adults.

None of that was inevitable. Josh grew up in Quincy, Illinois, in a large, extended Christian family, later moving to Northwest Indiana and graduating from Lake Central High School in 2018. Theater and sound tech filled his high school years; after a few semesters at Purdue Northwest, he landed a job as a patient service representative — the same office where mornings now begin in prayer. His stepfather was Catholic, his mother had been raised Catholic, and yet becoming Catholic himself was never really on Josh's radar.

Until, slowly, it was.

The invitation that changed everything

When Josh's family began attending SJE, something in him started to shift. "The more involved I became, the more it felt like family," he says. "God put it on my heart."

The real turning point came almost by accident — a promo video for Alpha flashed on the screens one Sunday, and his mother nudged him to give it a try. Josh did what has become his trademark move whenever life presents him with a fork in the road: he prayed about it. Then he signed up. And, as he puts it, he never turned back.

Alpha opened the door to real Christian community and a friendship with Jesus that felt personal rather than borrowed. Alpha opened his mind and heart to so much more!

The crash that became a calling

Then came May 2021.

Riding home from work in an Uber, Josh's car was hit and sent spinning into several other vehicles. He walked away — barely — with internal bleeding, a broken clavicle, and a broken toe. Doctors would later tell him it easily could have killed him.

But what Josh remembers isn't the violence of the impact. It's the stillness right after it. In the wreckage, he felt the warmth of God's presence and heard, unmistakably: everything would be okay.

He calls it the moment he knew he needed more of God, not less. Prayer stopped being something he fit in when he had time and became the thing that held every day together. "If I'm rushed and I don't pray," he says simply, "I feel separated from God."

That daily discipline is what's rippled out into every corner of his life — into a physician's office where colleagues now pray before their shift, into friendships where people know they can lean on him, into a parish where he's become the guy who says yes.

From there, he became God’s yes man, participating in — A Mission Trip, The Rescue Project, Connect Groups, Discovering Catholicism — each one asking a little more of him, and giving back even more.

Comfort zones and why he keeps leaving his

The Mission Trip was something Josh especially treasured because it pushed him past what's easy or familiar — putting him face to face with people he can serve, encourage, and point toward Christ. So, plans to continue to go on all the mission trips he can.

That willingness to step past comfort isn't new for him. Living with cerebral palsy, Josh has never let his body write the story of what he can or can't do. As a young man he competed in Special Olympics and served as a Global Messenger, speaking publicly about inclusion, dignity, and acceptance for every person — work that, in hindsight, was always pointing toward the same mission he's living out now: helping people see they matter to God.

Many at SJE know Josh from the parish's Holy Spirit video, grinning ear to ear while holding up a single word: Redeemer.

It's hard to imagine a better one.

Josh Znosko, second from the left, loves going on Mission Trips because they pull him out of his comfort zone.

What belonging actually produces

Christ met Josh's hesitation with an invitation to Alpha. He met tragedy with a wrecked car on the side of the road. And now He keeps meeting ordinary mornings in a medical office where a handful of coworkers pause to ask the Holy Spirit in before the day even begins.

Maybe that's the real lesson buried in this story — that God rarely changes a workplace, a friend group, or a parish through fireworks. More often, it's through one disciple who quietly decides, day after day, to pray first and worry later.

Asked what he'd tell someone searching for God, Josh doesn't rush the answer.

"Be quiet. Take a moment to have a conversation with God in prayer. Sit and listen. Give Him time, and He will point you in the right direction."

Then he smiles, and offers the prayer that seems to sum up his whole life in six words:

"Thank You, God, for showing up today."

For Josh, that's not a slogan. It's simply how he lives — and it's why coworkers are praying together, strangers are becoming friends, fellow parishioners are finding hope, and one disciple who hasn't even formally entered the Church yet is already showing the rest of us what it looks like to walk with Christ.

Come and See

Is God nudging you toward something? Maybe it's your first prayer. Maybe it's a question about the Catholic faith you've never asked out loud. Maybe it's a deeper relationship with Jesus you didn't know you were hungry for.

Consider joining Alpha. Explore OCIA. Sign up for a mission trip. Find your people in a faith-sharing group.

It only took one coworker asking, "Will you pray with me?" to change an entire office. Imagine what your one "yes" could do.